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Dec 3, 2009
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History and GovernmentCongressional BiographiesUtah

WATKINS, Arthur Vivian

(1886—1973)

Senate Years of Service: 1947-1959
Party: Republican

WATKINS, Arthur Vivian, a Senator from Utah; born in Midway, Wasatch County, Utah, December 18, 1886; attended the public schools, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 1903-1906, and New York University, New York City 1909-1910; graduated from Columbia University Law School, New York City 1912; admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Vernal, Utah; engaged in newspaper work in 1914; assistant county attorney of Salt Lake County 1914-1915; engaged in agricultural pursuits 1919-1925; district judge of the fourth judicial district of Utah 1928-1933; unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination to the Seventy-fifth Congress in 1936; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1946; reelected in 1952 and served from January 3, 1947, to January 3, 1959; was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1958; chairman, Select Committee on the Censure of Joseph McCarthy (Eighty-third Congress), co-chairman, Joint Committee on Navaho-Hopi Indian Administration (Eighty-third Congress), Joint Committee on Immigration and Naturalization Policy (Eighty-third Congress); member of the Indian Claims Commission, Washington, D.C., from August 1959, until retirement in September 1967; author; was a resident of Salt Lake City until he moved to Orem, Utah, in 1973 where he died September 1, 1973; interment in Eastlawn Memorial Hills.


Bibliography

American National Biography ; Dictionary of American Biography ; Watkins, Arthur. Enough Rope: The Inside Story of the Censure of Senator Joe McCarthy by his Colleagues . Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Metcalf, R. Warren. “Arthur V. Watkins and the Indians of Utah: A Study of Federal Termination Policy.” Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 1995.

Watkins, Arthur V. Enough Rope: The Inside Story of the Censure of Senator Joe McCarthy by his Colleagues: The Controversial Hearings that Signaled the End of a Turbulent Career and a Fearsome Era in American Public Life . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

___. “War by Executive Order.” The Western Political Quarterly . Vol. iv, no. 4 (December 1951): 539-549.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present

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